Brave schoolgirl Kelly-Louise Waterstreet is to give hope to a gravely ill youngster after her amazing fight for survival.

The Chronicle revealed how the eight-year-old has battled against a congenital bowel disorder which was diagnosed when she was only a week old.

A year ago she was given only minutes to live when she collapsed with stomach pains and was taken into intensive care where she was linked up to a life support machine.

But after four operations and 10 weeks in the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, the courageous youngster was back enjoying her life again with her parents, Margaret and Stephen, sister Hollie, aged 16, and brother Ross, 12.

Now her struggle to cope with the bowel problem, Hirschsprung's Disease, rare in girls, is to help a boy in France.

The boy, Robin Elliot-Menard, has the same disease, in which victims have no nerve endings in part of the lower segment of the bowel and as a result, they suffer from severe constipation and diarrhoea.

His family, who live in Floirac in the Bordeaux region, read about Kelly-Louise's plight in an article in The Times, a follow-up to an exclusive report in the Chronicle.

A letter to her parents, of Penshaw Village, Washington, was sent to the newspaper with a request to forward it to them.

But it was wrongly addressed and ended up at a school in Fatfield, Washington, before being mislaid for weeks before eventually being sent to Sunderland mayor, Ken Murray's office.

The office found out the correct address and invited Kelly-Louise and her mother to visit the mayor. Margaret, 49, said: "We should really have had the letter months ago but now that it has finally arrived I intend to write to the boy's parents.

"They don't say how old he is but I'm guessing he is still at school.

"Kelly-Louise is doing really well.

"Last year was pretty horrendous but she has recovered well.

"The visit to the mayor was fabulous. It was a very special day for Kelly-Louise."

Kelly-Louise had an operation when she was 12 days old to give her a colostomy and then at six months the colostomy and part of the bowel that did not function was removed.

She struggled with her bowel problems until the family read about a pioneering technique, an antigrade colonic enema, performed on a 10-year-old boy from Morpeth.

The operation enables sufferers to cope that much better with their problems and the family asked doctors to perform the surgery in January last year.